#1: Capitalize on Event-Based Lookalike Audiences

Lookalike audiences are one way to create highly targeted cold audiences on Facebook. While you can create multiple types of lookalikes, one of the most effective is the event-based lookalike.

With the Facebook pixel and conversion tracking, you can record the actions that matter most to your business such as purchases or leads, and create website custom audiences to group these people into a new audience.

Once you’ve created your custom audience, open your Audiences dashboard and choose Lookalike Audience from the Create Audience drop-down list.

In the Source field of the lookalike audience creation window, select your event-based website custom audience and then choose your target country and audience size.

Start with a 1% lookalike audience size because this is the closest match to your source audience. Then as you scale your ad spend, create new ad sets to test the other sizes, 2% and so on, up to the largest audience size of 10%.

Another valuable type of lookalike audience is one built from the lifetime value of your customers. It goes beyond just your customers’ core data (such as name and email) and utilizes their purchase value to create an even higher-quality lookalike.

To create this lookalike audience, first create a customer file custom audience with lifetime value. You then use this custom audience as the source audience for your lookalike.

#3: Improve Campaign Performance With Lowest-Cost Cap Bidding

One way to improve your campaign performance is to change your auction bidding from lowest cost to lowest cost with a cap.

By default, lowest cost is enabled in your ad sets. This tells Facebook to get the lowest cost per result possible. To do this, Facebook will automatically bid in the auction on your behalf for maximum efficiency.

When you set a bid cap with lowest-cost bidding, you can accomplish two different things depending on the cap value.

Control Costs

The first way to use cap bidding is to prevent costs from rising above an amount you’re comfortable with. This is especially beneficial if you know how much an instance of your optimization event is worth to you or what cost per optimization event you need to achieve to make a profit.

Increase Ad Distribution

The second way to use cap bidding is to increase the distribution of your ads within your targeting. Using the Dominate Method, you set your bid cap at three to four times the amount of your target cost per optimization result.

When you do this, Facebook targets the highest-quality segment of your target audience that’s most likely to take the action you’re optimizing for, helping you successfully outbid competing advertisers.

Let’s say you’re running a remarketing campaign for a product that retails for $50 and you’re using the Conversion objective optimizing for purchases, with a target cost of acquisition of $10.

Knowing the target acquisition cost, you set your bid cap at four times that value, which would be $40. The suggested daily budget according to Facebook is five times the bid cap — $200 per day — to complete the learning phase with at least 50 conversion actions in the first week.

To enable this feature, ensure Edit Placements is selected at the ad set level of your campaigns and then click the Select All Placements That Support Asset Customization link under Asset Customization.

Currently, you can customize your creative for the following placements:

Facebook Feeds

Instagram Feed

Instagram Stories

Audience Network Native, Banner and Interstitial

Audience Network Rewarded Videos

After you choose the relevant placements, such as Facebook Feeds and Instagram Feed, move down to the ad level. At the ad level, you have two options for customizing your image creative.

One option is to crop a single ad image to fit the native format of each of your placements. To use the crop feature, click the crop icon in the bottom-right corner of your image.

The other way is to select a unique image you’ve created in the native image format for each of your ad placements. To do this, click the Use a Different Image for Certain Placements drop-down menu.

#5: Use the Test and Learn Tool to Reveal Your Most Effective Campaigns

The Campaign Compare feature in the Test and Learn tool helps you determine which campaign delivers the most conversions at the lowest cost to your business. The test utilizes Facebook’s conversion lift metric, meaning you aren’t bound to viewing results via attribution windows and can therefore measure the true impact of your campaigns.

To access this tool, open Ads Manager and select Test and Learn from the Measure & Report column.

Next, select the campaign compare question in the main Test and Learn dashboard.

Now choose the two campaigns you want to compare. A best practice is to have only one variable change between the campaigns you’re comparing. For instance, you could compare the effectiveness of two campaigns at driving purchases. Both have the same placements and ad creative, but one uses the Conversions objective and the other the Traffic objective.

After you choose two similar campaigns you want to compare, select the event action that you want to track. This is the key action you want Facebook to measure as the result of the campaigns.

Finally, select your test duration. To view your test results, your campaigns need to generate at least 100 conversion actions for the event that you’ve selected to track. Therefore, based on the campaigns’ daily budget, select an appropriate time frame in which 100 conversions will be generated.

#6: Identify Your Best-Performing Ads Using the Split Testing Tool

Facebook’s split testing tool lets you test different versions of your ads so you can see what works best to improve future campaigns. Currently, you can create a split test comparing one of four variables — Creative, Delivery Optimization, Audience, and Placement — and up to five versions for each test.

Tip: If you’re using this tool for the first time, I recommend using the guided creation because Facebook will give you some instructions on how to create your first split test.

One way to use this tool is to create a split test for testing different audiences. You could test the effectiveness of lookalikes with different source audiences, such as one built from purchases and another built from Add to Cart actions.

In this example, you want to compare the effectiveness of two different audiences at the Awareness stage. You’re warming up cold audiences with video content so you choose the Video Views objective.

After you’ve selected your objective, Facebook takes you to the ad set level. Select the Audience variable from the Variables section.

You’ll then see two audience sections, one for Ad Set A and one for Ad Set B. You can either create a new audience directly or select a saved audience.

Once you’ve chosen the two audiences you want to test, complete the rest of your ad set, selecting your placements, delivery optimization, budget, and test duration. Start with an even budget split between the two ad sets and then select your test duration, which can be between 3 and 14 days.

Finally, at the ad level, create or select an existing post. If you already have an ad that has worked well in previous campaigns, click Use Existing Post and enter the post ID to maintain the social engagement and total video views.

If not, go ahead and create a new ad using the ad creation panel. In this example, because you’ve chosen the Video Views objective, you’d upload the video you want to use, and create a headline and description in the text section.

#7: Use a 3-Step Funnel to Structure Remarketing Campaigns

Successful advertising starts with the right strategy and positioning. Don’t deliver sales-based ad campaigns straight to cold audiences of potential customers. They don’t know, like, or trust you yet, so you won’t see consistent and sustainable sales or leads from your campaigns.

At the top of the funnel is Awareness. At this stage, the goal is to provide value to your target audiences through entertaining or educational video content.

By using video ad campaigns, you can grab the attention of your target audiences in the news feed and build video custom audiences to group people based on their engagement with your video content. You can capture the most engaged people and use them as the targeting in your mid-funnel Level 1 Remarketing campaigns.

Improve Mid-Funnel CTR With Ad Copy Built Around Snap, Benefit, and Action

This tip relates to the ad copy structure that you use in direct-response ads to grab your audience’s attention in the news feed, improve your ads’ CTR, and drive more people to your website.

At Level 1, you position sales-based ad campaigns that feature some type of offer, using either the Traffic or Conversion campaign objectives. You’re targeting people who have previously engaged with your content ads. The goal is to spur consideration of your products or services by driving highly targeted website traffic, a small percentage of which will convert into new customers.

This tactic is more effective than just positioning direct-response ads to cold audiences. When you show the ads to people who have previously engaged with your content (predominantly videos), you’ll see better ad engagement rates.

The SBA Copy Method consists of three parts: Snap, Benefit, and Action. The Snap is the attention-grabbing first line of copy. What you say here depends on the product or service offer in your campaign.

To illustrate, if you’re an ecommerce company, you might offer a product discount. The Snap would be the discount and the code to use at checkout, such as “Get 20% OFF [your product name] using the discount code FB20.”

The Snap is then followed by the Benefit. Here, you list core features of your product or service, and the benefit of eachto your target audience. When it comes to effective copy, just listing features isn’t enough; people want to know how those features benefit them and the overall impact on their lives.

Finally, the third part of the SBA copy method is the Action. Here you explicitly state the action your target audience needs to perform to take advantage of the offer you’ve positioned in your ad. Keeping with the ecommerce example, the action would be a sentence at the end of your ad copy like: “Click the link below to shop now.”

Improve Conversions With Reminder, Testimonial, and Messenger Ads

At Level 2, using website custom audiences and the RTM method, you remarket to your visitors with ads related to the pages they’ve viewed and actions they’ve taken on your website. For instance, remarket to people who have viewed a specific product page, added it to their cart, and initiated checkout but didn’t complete the purchase. The RTM method consists of three ad types — Reminders, Testimonials, and Messenger.

The Reminder ad is one of the most simple, yet effective, types of ads. With this ad, you create a sense of urgency in your ad copyto encourage people to take action now. You could remind people of the offer you presented to them at Level 1, or share a new limited-time offer based on the product or service they viewed on your website.

Testimonials work well at the Level 2 stage because your website visitors are already in the buying decision process. When you use testimonials directly in your ad copy, you create social proof that builds the confidence and trust your target audiences need to convert into new customers.

Position a single testimonial at the start of each ad, and follow it with a reminder of an offer for your product or service that’s relevant to the pages of your website they’ve visited.

Messenger ads are an easy-to-open direct communication with your target audience. These aren’t ads with the Messenger placement but rather Traffic ads that send people straight to the Messenger destination to start a conversation with you.

Messenger ads are best used by high-end service providers when the purchase decision requires more consideration or some complexities need explanation before potential customers purchase.

What do you think? Do you regularly use some of these tactics with your Facebook campaigns? What tips can you offer? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.